Sky Force Reloaded by Infinite Dreams is a top-down spaceship shooter sequel of Sky Force Anniversary. The game starts you right off throwing you into a fight where you subsequently get shot down, at least I did. It was actually kind of mean because they throw you in the game with a nice updated ship and when you actually start the next mission you’re riding in a POS with a spitball gun trying to kill the enemies. Before we talk about the game we can look at what you’re in for with the game.

In the main story-line there are 15 missions each with 4 “normal” objectives to complete. You’ll need to complete each mission and a set amount of objectives to unlock the next mission. Once you complete the normal objectives you can go back and try to complete the hard ones and then the “Insane” objectives. Each level of objectives requires you to go back and replay the levels earning more and more starts to unlock more powerful weapons, bombs, shields and other upgrades. While flying around killing enemies there are many power-ups available as well. You’ll collect in-level weapon upgrades that increase fire rate and damage.

There are also special power-up cards that can last either 15 minutes or are permanent. These give you bonuses like increased maximum fire rate and card drop rate increase which can be very helpful. There are also ship part that will randomly fly around that you’ll want to get if you want your ship to have a different paint job. And finally for bonuses and collectables there are Objectives. These are all things you’d expect like “Kill X enemies”, “Install x upgrade” and so on.

Objectives help you by unlocking Technicians who also will give you bonuses. The first one you unlock gives you a random crate in the level full of extra start which is really handy early on. There is local multiplayer and online tournaments where you can compete your friends scores but not live which would have been nice. And now onto the game. Sky Force Reloaded has a very basic story line. Kill the enemies, save the people stranded in the levels, collect stars and kill the boss and while this game-type has been done many times before, this iteration has been done incredibly well. The level graphics are done very well, the AI flight paths and enemy locations get progressively harder and harder as you make your way throughout the levels and completing levels with fulfilling every objective gets more and more satisfying the higher and higher you get in the levels.

With the different difficulty settings per level you also get to play the same level with harder enemies. This is a nice change to just playing the same level over and over again to earn stars to unlock the levels. While you may find yourself playing the same level over and over again it won’t be just to get stars to unlock things, you’ll need to play the levels to unlock the next levels and challenge yourself to complete the game on Insane difficulty.

There are few games that get you gripping a controller so hard that your hands hurt and are still enjoyable and this is one of them. While there were many times that I wanted to throw the controller against the wall, I thankfully didn’t and kept on grinding. Considering this was a mobile game they did an amazing job porting it over to the Xbox and for the price you’ll have hours and hours of game. Achievement hunters beware! There are no piece-of-cake achievements here. While there is one for participating in a tournament, the rest are all for completion of the game. Many of them are “complete x level on insane difficulty” and “collect all cards” and some for finishing every level with each ship which will take forever. All-in-all Sky Force Reloaded is a great game and highly recommend picking it up.

A download code was provided for this review by the developer/publisher

8100

Gameplay8.5

Graphics8

Audio7

Replay Value8.5

Value for Money8

Sky Force Reloaded

Sky Force Reloaded makes the top down spaceship shooter games fun again. Playing this brought me back to the days I used to throw my NES controller on the ground playing Tiger Heli. It has a simple premise and story which allows you to get right into the game and start flying around shooting enemies. Highly recommended especially for the friendly price.

Nice Graphics

Smooth Gameplay

No huge story which for some could be a turn off

Your thumbs may start hurting and you may break your controller in rage